The La Jolla Playhouse took in about $3 million in royalties last year, mostly from the Des McAnuff-directed “Jersey Boys,” which not only just marked five years on Broadway but also has six other productions in the United States and worldwide.— Courtesy photo

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The La Jolla Playhouse took in about $3 million in royalties last year, mostly from the Des McAnuff-directed “Jersey Boys,” which not only just marked five years on Broadway but also has six other productions in the United States and worldwide.
/ Courtesy photo

“The Times They Are A-Changin’,” 2006: Twyla Tharp’s adventurous Bob Dylan “dancical” had its missteps, lasting less than two months on Broadway.

“A Catered Affair,” 2007: Written by and featuring Harvey Fierstein (“Hairspray”), it earned three Tony nominations but proved a tough sell for audiences.

LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE

“Big River,” 1984: Des McAnuff’s musical rendering of the Huckleberry Finn saga made San Diego’s first Broadway splash, running more than 1,000 performances in New York, and winning the Tony for best musical.

“I Am My Own Wife,” 2001: Starting as a Page to Stage workshop project, it not only won the Tony for best play but also earned the Pulitzer Prize for playwright Doug Wright.

“Jersey Boys,” 2004: McAnuff turned the story of the pop act the Four Seasons into a worldwide hit, with five years and counting on Broadway.

“Cry-Baby,” 2007: The stage version of the John Waters movie earned a Tony nomination as best musical but closed after a disappointing two-month run.

“Memphis,” 2008: Directed by Christopher Ashley, the musical about the early days of rock had its official opening Oct. 19. It continues to do steady business.

— James Hebert

Bonnie and Clyde picked a tough way to make a living. If the two 1930s outlaws really craved a wild career ride, though, they might have considered musical theater.

Tonight, “Bonnie and Clyde,” a musical adaptation of the doomed duo’s story, has its world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse. With all the show has going for it — sexy story, Broadway-seasoned creative team, hot young actors and a theater renowned for developing new work — it could well become the 17th Playhouse production to land on Broadway.

If that happens, the project would join more than three dozen works that San Diego has exported to Broadway over the past few decades, including 20 from the crosstown Old Globe Theatre. Two Playhouse-launched projects are running on New York’s street of dreams right now: the monster hit “Jersey Boys” and the new musical “Memphis.”

The pipeline to Broadway — pioneered in the 1980s by former artistic directors Jack O’Brien of the Old Globe and Des McAnuff of the Playhouse — has made a national name for San Diego theater.

“I would say probably the frequency and commercial success rate of the shows coming out of San Diego is unparalleled,” said Susie Medak, managing director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre and president of the League of Regional Theatres, ﻿which represents 76 nonprofit theater companies nationwide. “San Diego has a long history among your companies of building very successful relationships with commercial partners.”

That history has made conjuring such projects seem almost routine. But those who run the theaters and put together the shows say it’s anything but.

“You never know,” said Michael S. Rosenberg, the Playhouse’s managing director. “The show you think is going to be the most commercial thing ever, inevitably ends up not being that. And the thing you think, ‘No way would anyone go for this,’ ends up being a success.”

At the Old Globe — which has birthed New York-bound shows from the Tony-winning “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” to “A Catered Affair,” which opened on Broadway in 2008 — executive producer/CEO Louis G. Spisto doesn’t bank on Broadway glory.

“If it happens, it’s fantastic, but it’s not anything an organization should ever plan on,” Spisto said. “Broadway — it’s a very tricky business. And there’s very little to go on in terms of past track records. Every project is (unique). The exact fit for Broadway at any one time — YOU try to figure it out.”

Instead, those who run these institutions (San Diego Repertory Theatre has sent one show to Broadway under artistic director Sam Woodhouse) say their mission is the same as at regional nonprofit theater companies across the country: to present the best possible shows for their local audiences.

Even when those shows land in New York, “I think that in the best of all possible worlds, they weren’t necessarily aiming at Broadway,” said Christopher Ashley, the Playhouse’s artistic director, and the director of “Memphis,” which he brought to the theater last year. “They were aiming at being an incredible show at that regional theater.”

One reason not to get too caught up in talk of a Broadway transfer — and for the record, there are no announced plans for “Bonnie and Clyde” beyond La Jolla — is that even seemingly surefire projects have to do more than look good on paper.

Frank Wildhorn, who wrote the score for “Bonnie and Clyde,” is one of the few composers ever to have three shows running on Broadway simultaneously. But he has had his rougher outings as well — including “Dracula, The Musical,” which had a troubled debut at the Playhouse in 2001 and took another three years to reach Broadway for a relatively short run.

“It’s always a process,” Wildhorn said. “You can do as many workshops as you want. But an audience is going to tell you so much that you can’t learn any other way. And not an audience of industry insiders who have never paid for a ticket in their lives. Just regular folks.”

Another good reason for caution: The stakes can be high. It’s not unusual for the Broadway production of a full-scale musical to cost $15 million or more. Even straight plays can be expensive, and come with risks to match. The just-announced closing of David Mamet’s “Oleanna” means the production reportedly will lose more than $2 million.

Such risks are a key reason for the modern rise of partnerships between commercial producers and nonprofit theaters. Instead of renting a theater in Boston or New Haven, Conn., to try out a new show as in decades past, potential producers now often provide “enhancement” funds for a regional theater to stage the work.

The producers benefit from the regional company’s facilities, artistic expertise and audience base, and have more of a window to develop the work. The theater gets the money to showcase and plump up a promising property — not to mention entice audiences with the prospect of seeing what could be Broadway’s next big thing — without betting the house on a given work.

“Bonnie and Clyde” is boosted by an unspecified amount of enhancement money, plus about $500,000 from Playhouse donors, Rosenberg said.

There are lots of ways such projects come together, from shows that arrive at a theater with funding already in place and a Broadway date penciled in, to those getting a first real look (such as the Old Globe’s recent musical “The First Wives Club”), to co-productions with other regional theaters, an increasingly common practice. The Playhouse teamed with Seattle’s Fifth Avenue Theatre on “Memphis.”

With regional theaters’ rising influence can come inevitable temptations, said Howard Sherman, executive director of the American Theatre Wing, the national nonprofit advocacy organization that oversees the Tony Awards.

“Obviously, as a not-for-profit, you want to minimize financial risks,” Sherman said. “But artistically, the question is, is this work that the theater believes is part of its artistic mission, that it wants its audience to see?

“In some cases — and I’m not referring to any specific (companies) — you see theaters that may be tantalized by the offer of enhancement, who may do a work simply because there’s a financial gain to it. And that’s the danger. The not-for-profit theater was not created to be the out-of-town tryout system for commercial producers.”

Still, a successful show can mean a tidy additional revenue stream for the regional theater that partnered on it; the company usually earns a small percentage of the profits.

With “A Catered Affair,” for example, the Old Globe earned about 1 percent of the grosses for what turned out to be a modest Broadway run. The Playhouse continues to earn royalties of about 1 percent on the McAnuff-directed “Jersey Boys,” which not only just marked five years on Broadway but also has six other productions in the United States and worldwide.

The theater took in about $3 million in royalties last year, according to tax filings, mostly from that show.

Rosenberg agreed that with such a successful property, “there’s no question it’s a windfall for the theater.” But, he said, “it’s not really life-changing money for an institution of our size. And it’s also money that can go away tomorrow.”

“We have subscribers who’ve been with us for 20 years. A hit like ‘Jersey Boys’ is not going to pay us for 20 years. It’s just not.”

Inevitably, shows being talked up for Broadway can’t help but draw outsize buzz compared with other productions in a theater’s season lineup, and they make for a good marketing hook: The Old Globe’s ads tout the Broadway angle.

Still, Spisto said, such shows are usually just a small part of a theater’s offerings.

“They’re great because they subsidize other projects,” Spisto said. “But they represent maybe two out of 15 productions.”

Ashley likens finding that balance to the job of being a good parent.

“I think you have to be proud of all your children — not just the ones that win Tony Awards, but also the ones who go teach at a public school,” Ashley said. “There are all kinds of ways for a play or a musical to be amazing. And I think it’s its own trap to look at something as, it only succeeds if it gets to Broadway, and if it doesn’t, it’s a failure. I think of Broadway as the amazing bonus, and not the goal.”